Opinion - Letters to the Editor

POSTED: Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009

What has energy department accomplished?

Do you have any readers that can remember the reason that was given for the establishment of the Department of Energy during the Carter Administration?

We have spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency that no one can remember. At the time, everyone thought it very appropriate to have a Department of Energy. So it was instituted on August 4, 1977, 32 years ago. The intent, as I recall, was to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.

Now, the budget for this very important agency is funded at $24.2 billion per year. The Department of Energy now has 16,000 federal employees and 100,000 contract employees. And look at the results they have achieved. Ah, well, they've certainly been keeping 116,000 people employed, and of course you and I are paying their wages.

And I'd be pleased if they were producing great things, like what they were hired for, figuring out how to tap the billions of barrels of crude oil and natural gas on our continent so, that we don't have to import from our enemies. Our oil companies could do that job.

Now, we are turning the banking system, health care and the automobile industry over to those same politicians?

Roy W. Nicholas

Bellingham